


presque vu

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, John-centric, M/M, Memories, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Scratch, idk how to tag this jeez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9347549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your name is John Crocker.You desperately want to remember.





	

**Author's Note:**

> gosh okay!! 
> 
> i posted this for amino and i think it might be good enough for the big a to the o to the tres

Your name is John Crocker.

Your best friend is a boy named David Levine. You meet him in service because you’re a boy from one of the few families that attend synagogue every week and his family is like that, too. So you two hit it off pretty easily. He thinks your piano playing is cool and you think his hockey playing is cool and the two of you are friends for a very long time.

You’re ten years old when you look at David and realize he’s kind of different than you remember him being. You remember him being blonder. Tanner. Taller. He’s got this crooked nose from when he broke it in a match a year ago and you almost startle when you glance at him sometimes but his face isn’t the face you expect to see, but when you think harder on it, you don’t know whose face you imagined before his met your eyes.

When you go into the sixth grade, David moves to Wyoming and you don’t see him after that. Your mom urges you to call him, but when you try your fingers can’t turn the dial right, or maybe you don’t want them to turn it right, so you put the phone up and give up on David Levine. You’ll find a new best friend.

•• ••

Your name is John Crocker.

In seventh grade, you kiss a girl named Elizabeth, who wears her mom’s dark-colored lipstick and it smears all over your lips and feels sticky and kind of gross (that lipstick reminds you of something, _someone_ , too. You do not know who.). You roll the flat of your tongue over your stained teeth when the closet door busts open and hunch your shoulders sheepishly. Elizabeth whispers something about you to her best friend and you sit down by the guys with a tint to your cheeks and an ocean crashing in your ears.

They ask if it’s your first kiss and you say no, you’ve kissed someone before. They ask who, excitedly, as if this is high-end gossip and their name is on your lips, right on the tip of your tongue, but you furrow your brow and shake your head and say you can’t remember her _(his)_ name.

A guy wolf-whistles and sing-songs, “Player!” while a couple of other guys grumble about you being a liar. The girls just giggle. Elizabeth winks at you. You feel your stomach clench.

•• ••

Your name is still John Crocker.

You go into high school with more friends than you could ever ask for and confidence you never expected to have. You grin and laugh and your jokes get your classmates into stitches and you’re popular. You’re popular. It feels weird and strange because, gosh, you still have a voice in the back of your mind calling you a dork, a dweeb, a nerd. And it’s not mean-spirited. It’s odd that you know it isn’t mean spirited but it never sounds mean, it sounds friendly, a jab one of your buddies might make and it’s always there.

Even as you get class clown in your yearbook and even as your friends sit on your bed as you practice your stand-up in the mirror and tell you you’re a natural, you’re hilarious, you’re still not cool. Maybe you aren’t. Your hair is a nightmare, your teeth are worse, your bulky glasses aren’t especially charming. You’ve had a girlfriend or two, but you’re not one of the cool football-player types even though a lot of your friends are those types. You suppose you’re cool in your own respect.

It’s ironic. You’d become cool because of that smug though in the back of your brain telling you that you couldn’t. You recognize the voice, annoyingly enough, though you can’t place it. Some guy, maybe you went to primary school with him. Maybe he was one of the boys you hardly knew from your extended family who your father insisted come to your bar mitzvah. Or maybe he’s just some figure you’ve crafted to build your character, which is odd and unlikely since you’d probably know more about a figure of your own imagination than just that they had a name starting with a ‘D’ or an ‘S’ or something.

After a while, the thought goes away. You like to think that it left because it was proud of you. You tell your friends about the voice and one of them says that you might wanna get your head checked out from the time the microphone at the comedy club bonked your head.

You shove him and tell him to shut up.

•• ••

Your name is John.

You don’t like applications or interviews. They always have scared you. Your girlfriend urges you to go on, put yourself out there, you’re _hilarious, John, don’t be a drag!_ So after high school, it’s audition after audition and performance after performance and people love you.

They love you so much, in fact, that soon you’re getting offers from much bigger people than just local pubs and radio shows. People start asking you to write their comedy skits, big-name comedians want _you_ to write their jokes. You accept and the more you write, the more you make, the more people notice you. Sure, you’re not a household name, but you’re getting there.

You wonder if you’re still cool. You wonder if… whoever would be proud of you.

Gosh, you’ve got such a sour memory.

•• ••

Your name is John Lawrence.

Okay, it really isn’t. Your wife is taking your last name, make no mistake. She’d accepted in a heartbeat. You marry happily and your sister even comes out to wish you a happy marriage (she’s not really your sister, though, is she? Her eyes are too blue, her hair is too short, her skin is too pale. You wonder to yourself why she wouldn’t be your sister, she looks just like you. There is an oddity to her you cannot place), punching you too-hard in the shoulder and you laugh to cover up your hurt as you rub it.

David Levine shows up and the two of you hugs for the first time in over a decade. He tells you about his children and family in the next town over, since they’ve just moved back to Washington. You smile and ask him how he’s been, how was medical school, his wife looks absolutely lovely, how did they meet?

The conversation is nice but leaves sometimes to be desired. You think you make a joke, the context of it slips your mind, something about stairs or elevators, and he gives you a look and laughs nervously. You realize only after he’s gone that he hadn’t gotten the joke and then you realize you didn’t get it either. What did that mean, even?

You shake it off. One too many drinks. It’s a good thing you didn’t have an open bar.

•• ••

Your name is, yet again, John.

Two days into your honeymoon and you get a call from some talent agent stationed in California. Says he’s heard a lot about you and he thinks you’re the next big name in comedy or something like that. You ask him what he’s wanting. He says it’s simple.

You make a contract with him. He tells you this is your big break, and gosh, you believe it.

•• ••

Yes, you are the real John Crocker.

Everyone knows who you are. They hate you or love you or admire you or envy you or somewhere in between and you wouldn’t have it any other way. You’ve gotten into big-screen motion pictures and your stand-up could pack a Broadway theater and you’ve done more than your fair share of charity drives and auctions and you’re a real celebrity now.

You can hardly believe it yourself, being a real famous guy. People notice you on the streets. You have your own driver and chef and people who do your wardrobe and makeup and it’s all so fun and exciting even though you’ve been living like this for a year or so now, it all feels so strange.

Your son is born halfway through a shooting of a movie you were asked to feature in. It’s got some lesser-known actor in it, too, Nicolas something-or-other. Something keeps dinging in the back of your brain about it, but you pay it no mind. Your wife names him after her father, so James Egbert it is.

You mean Crocker. James Crocker.

•• ••

Your name is not John Egbert.

You must be getting old faster than you thought, cutting through your years faster than you had expected. Your career was slowing down. Your stand-up was still there but it wasn’t as prevalent. You were famous but not slapped onto every tabloid ever. It was just as well with you, taking time to be with your family is more important than anything to you.

But your name. It’s more of an issue than you ever thought it could be. You stutter sometimes on your own last name as if you hadn’t had it all your life! Oh, you’d need to write some material about parenting and getting old.

•• ••

Your name is John Crocker, do you have to staple that to your brain?

You have the wrong last name. Your sister’s eyes are the wrong color. Your best friend is too short and his hair is too dark. Your chief editor has such peculiar-colored eyes that it jabs at you in your heart and whenever your bodyguard yells too much you get these memories triggered in the back of your mind, memories that leave as soon as they show up.

You are becoming senile. Your son is hardly a teenager.

•• ••

Your name is John Crocker. Crocker. Crocker.

You don’t know why you married your wife. You don’t love her. You love her dark hair and blue eyes and large-framed glasses and you love her cackling laugh and her too-big grins and you fire your bodyguard and he yells at you, yells at you, yells at you until you raise your voice higher and tell him to _get out of here_ and then you call him a name that is not his and he stares at your, scowls, then walks off.

 _Old fucking idiot,_ he mutters on his way out. You don’t retort.

You stop working on movie sets when your assistant stutters too much, when the director wears scarfs that are striped and awfully, horribly obnoxious when your co-star in a 50s era movie wears red cat-eyed glasses that you request must _not be red for personal reasons_ before you will star in the film.

You stop visiting your sister. You request a new editor. Your best friend is abandoned in favor of work, work, _work._

Even your son is wrong because he _is not your son, he is not supposed to be your child, this is all backward._

You want that voice back in your head. You want him to tell you what you’re doing wrong because you are falling to bits and pieces.

•• ••

Your name is John Crocker, but now it is also Poppop.

Your granddaughter is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, though it is mostly through pictures. You ignore the prying thoughts that tell you she’s not supposed to be your granddaughter, _there has to be an explanation to why everything is so messed up._

You think she’s gorgeous.

•• ••

Your old comedy is garbage.

Oh, jellyfish jamboree, you messed up.

Your name is John Crocker and your old comedy is garbage.

How did you have people who liked it? You don’t really know. You laugh and tell your son (he is not your son) that his daughter (she is not his daughter) must have a sense of humor just as wretched as yours to enjoy the stuff you do. He tells you that she’s always idolized you (this is backward too) and what for, you wonder, but you don’t say it.

He tells you he had gotten a letter from some old batty woman who lived out on an island, says it was addressed to you. He slides it on the bedside table and you don’t care enough to read it, you tell him that you’re done with all this confusing stuff, that you’re ready for it to be over.

He tells you not to be ridiculous. He tells you that you’re going to be fine, this will be alright.

You laugh and it feels dry in your throat. You don’t find many things funny anymore. Most people regarded you as crazy when you laughed at such mundane things, things that were not funny to anyone but you. (And to them. They were funny to them, too.)

He says he loves you. You say it back to him, and he kisses your forehead, and then he leaves. The room is dark after the door closes.

You don’t really care if anyone liked your comedy, to be honest. Well, maybe one person. But, still, even in old age, you cannot put a name to his face. And, after so many years of trying and trying and failing to find out who he is, you find that you’re done. You are too old to care.

You glance over at the letter from the woman. You don’t know what lays inside the envelope, stamped shut with a bright green wax seal. You know this will be your last chance to ever read it. Your son may have hopes, but you are very old, and you know that this tiredness you feel isn’t just sleep-deprivation.

For the first time in your life, you do not think of him. And, ironically, you can vaguely recall his voice, accented, deep, sharp. He's telling you what you want to hear. And he's calling you the name that isn't yours but it _is._

You close your eyes.

•• ••

Far in the future, but not too far, some hapless teenage boy whose name starts with a ‘D’ or maybe an ‘S’ flicks onto an old comedy skit with some old comedian playing on some obscure nostalgia channel that he doesn’t quite remember being on his TV guide.

  
He doesn’t quite laugh, but the corner of his lips twitches up in a smile.


End file.
